Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday August 24, 2009 @09:00PM
from the knock-knock-who's-there-anonymous dept.

The NY Times reports on an epochal move by Wikipedia — within weeks, the formerly freewheeling encyclopedia will begin requiring editor approval for all edits to articles about living people. "The new feature, called 'flagged revisions,' will require that an experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia sign off on any change made by the public before it can go live. Until the change is approved — or in Wikispeak, flagged — it will sit invisibly on Wikipedia's servers, and visitors will be directed to the earlier version. ... The new editing procedures... have been applied to the entire German-language version of Wikipedia during the last year... Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries."

Basically, he was given a morning slot on what was previously a radio station aimed at analy retentive muso's as an attempt to make it appeal to a wider crowd. The original crowd who liked it are so up in arms that the started a campaign to get him him off air. It seems that campaign revolves around repeated vandalism and

A "bureaucratic" layer is actually necessary, and it's already there. That's because you need a human to judge if a change is acceptable or not. The change here is merely about when the check will occur. As it stands now, someone changes stuff, it goes live, and later someone from the bureaucratic layer comes in and takes a look at it. As you can see, for every edit, there's a period of time when unchecked versions are produced to the public. The more edits happen, the less reliable Wikipedia as a whole becomes.

The country I live in is a former British colony, and the official entry on Wikipedia regarding that country is firmly controlled by the government, and the history portion of the entry blames British for everything, something that is patently false

I have tried to correct those mistakes but everytime within 15 minutes the old entry are back, and finally I was warned by someone (supposed to be volunteer for Wikipedia) to STOP meddling with that particular entry

My experience is only for that entry, and God knows how many of such types of patently false information that are purposely displayed in Wikipedia

Then you get into a reversion battle. Then BOTH you and the "volunteer" will be temporarily-banned, and I suspect said volunteer will be outed as a government employee and banned forever, whereas you'll be allowed back on.

Another tactic is to simply tag everything "Citation needed" to see if they can come-up with sources to validate their incorrect history. Give them a month, and if they can't, then erase the info as "uncited material removed". They might try to revert but you can remove it again with th

So why not tell us what the article is, instead of us taking your word for it? (I just don't get it - people will often claim on Slashdot that an article is false, yet they never tell us the entry, and expect us to believe unreferenced claims made on a webforum...)

Chances are that he doesn't want to attract attention from fellow citizens of his country, or its government, by naming it. There may be a very good reason for that, especially while posting under his own UID.

I admit, it *is* frustrating when someone says: Some article, which is to be completely unnamed, has this happening to it, but I won't tell you what it is.

On the other hand, there are a finite number of former British colonies, so it is conceivable that you could just look around articles on those and

Correct. A clique of editors has taken power, and now is solidifying their power. This move is a critical step though is establishing their complete control; I would liken it to Lenin abolishing free elections in the Soviets after the Russian Revolution. Its the step that removes any doubt in peoples minds about where things are heading.

Last time I checked wikipedia was just a website. It's not like anyone at all on the planet is restricted from grabbing a copy of mediawiki to go roll out their own encyclopedic revolution with their own rules. If the regulations get too arduous, people will jump ship.

The claim "it's just a website" is often trotted out, but it's untrue.

It's a website set up to function deliberately as a linkfarm, which has search engine rankings far above what it should have if it were treated like every other linkfarm out there. It's full of inaccurate, possibly libelous, or outright harmful (in the case of many articles regarding drugs/herbs/"homeopathic remedies") statements in most of the articles. As a "first stop" for "information" for many searchers, it has an amazing ability to influence thought processes, and as such is a breeding ground for fights and control-freak behavior from people trying to bias a topic their way.

The regulations have already gotten too arduous. Most of the good administrators jumped ship long ago. Some have turned around [livejournal.com] and exposed the ongoing problems [kuro5hin.org]. Most simply gave up in disgust. The result? A biased, horribly squished encyclopedia. Well-written entries, such as one on PSP homebrew software [wikipedia.org], were nuked to oblivion because of admins and cliques with an agenda against the topic. Articles that at one time were well balanced have been completely destroyed when counterbalancing interests saw only one side run off the encyclopedia, and the other side now rules the articles with an iron fist. Look back into what happened to the Falafel article when a bunch of organized arabs decided to try to eliminate any mention of Jewish influence (or of Jews or Israel in general) on the dish.

Wikipedia exists, but does not function anymore. And the only way to fix it involves getting rid of the entrenched assholes, whereas the proposed change gives entrenched assholes even more power.

When people write like that about the Wikipedia and go on and on, they usually have some personal axe to grind. Do you, and if so, which one?

When people respond like that, it's usually a sign they're a brainwashed wikipidiot.

What's my issue? I have watched countless articles, worked on hard by tireless individuals, turned into rubbish by a combination of morons, power-hungry game players, and organized POV-pushing mobs. I've watched excellently written and researched articles destroyed, turned into stubs, and then deleted by 16-year-old "administrators" who don't know what a scholarly journal is and believe that if they can't get the text on the internet, it doesn't exist.

I've watched scandal after scandal after scandal when the "inner workings" of wikipedia were exposed. I watched the entire crop of Wikipedia's admins stand by and do absolutely jack crap while Essjay rose up, blocked the publication of truthful information on the strength of falsified credentials, banned whoever the fuck he pleased, and generally made a bigoted douchebag of himself before finally being exposed for a liar and a fraud [textfiles.com].

Was there ever an apology to the number of people Essjay libeled? Those he banned from the encyclopedia that didn't deserve it?

Where has there ever been an apology made for the constant misbehavior of ANY wikipedia administrator for that matter? Not only has there not been one, the trend in changes has always been consolidation of power and elimination of any ability for editors falsely accused and abused by the abusive personalities that consist of Wikipedia's "admin" group to speak back in their own defense.

There hasn't, not once. Even trying to investigate whether people were treated fairly and within policy is usually grounds for being called a "troll" and summarily banned by the abuse-defenders. Wikipedia is hopelessly broken as long as the entrenched douchebags are in power.

Indeed, and in fact, this is a step forward: currently the only method at the moment is to protect articles, locking anonymous and new editors out completely. With this system, they'll now be allowed to edit again.

Indeed, and in fact, this is a step forward: currently the only method at the moment is to protect articles, locking anonymous and new editors out completely. With this system, they'll now be allowed to edit again.

And in other news, our glorious leader has raised the chocolate ration to 25 grams, from the already generous 30 grams of last month.

Indeed, and in fact, this is a step forward: currently the only method at the moment is to protect articles, locking anonymous and new editors out completely. With this system, they'll now be allowed to edit again.

And in other news, our glorious leader has raised the chocolate ration to 25 grams, from the already generous 30 grams of last month.

I want to see Wikipedia grow and flourish. Rules like this will only help, as long as there are enough "trusted" editors to handle putting the edits into place.

Yes, but that's one heck of a qualification.

o Who is a "trusted" editor? o What is the qualification process for earning "trust"? o And the Big Question(tm) - Will the qualification process work quickly enough to match the growth in new biographic articles?

If the last one turns out to be "no" there will be a fairly sharp drop off in new articles. This strikes me as quickly becoming one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" moments.

Oh, that's easy. I know, I give away trade secrets here, but hey, you don't know what's my handle on Wikipedia, so I can enjoy the anonymity of the internet on this one.

1) Edit. Edit, edit, edit, edit. It's not what you edit, it's how often you do it. Being anal retentive and insistant in British spelling (or American, if it's spelled in BE) helps a lot here. Start with the pages of actors, you'll get heaps of "theater/theatre" edits for cheap.

2) Learn who is important and who is not. Having a good memory for names helps, but so does a good list. Do not skip this step, it can be devastating later when you...

3) Undo edits from nobodies. No matter if they were contributing or vandalizing, what matters is that your edit-counter moves up. Make certain, though, that you don't do it to anyone who might be important enough to stink up a storm. People don't like being reverted, well, that's no problem if they don't count, but reverting a change from someone you're trying to suck up to is kinda a career killer.

4) Suck up to someone important. The discussion pages are for that. Join every topic that could be remotely controversal and butt in. You learned in Step 2 who is important and who isn't. Use it.

Ok, cynicism aside. But it seems that a lot of people do just that. They see Wikipedia as some sort of game they want to "win". There are of course a few (often rather "old") contributors that earned their status with important, insightful and accurate information, but more and more people climb that "ladder" only by gaming the system. That these people then will have the power to dictate what becomes canon and what doesn't is a bit of a chill up my spine.

And I think this is the problem with what Wikipedia is becoming. People are gaining "power" in the Wikipedia system, and that "power" is real-world power.

Think about it, Wikipedia is a big deal, what did the article say? 6 million people viewed Michael Jackson's Wikipedia article in six hours. Almost anything you search online, you get Wikipedia as the first result. Companies already use Wikipedia to "advertise" themselves. How long will it be until these heavyweights on Wikipedia realize that they have real-world power, and sell themselves to spread misinformation on Wikipedia for money? All it would take is for Joe Corporation to pay Joe Wikipedia an amount of money, Joe Wikipedia edits Joe Corporation's Wikipedia article, and no-one can or will challenge Joe Wikipedia, because he's one of the elite.
Yeah, yeah, take off the tinfoil hat, but this seems likely to me. I know I'll be taking everything I read on Wikipedia with a grain of salt, which of course anyone should be doing anyways.

Not that I oppose this move, Wikipedia has got to do what it's got to do. But I also think there should be a watchdog system in place.

I want to see Wikipedia grow and flourish. Rules like this will only help, as long as there are enough "trusted" editors to handle putting the edits into place.

"Trusted" needs to be accompanied by "neutral." As long as teh editors do not have a particular viewpoint they wish to impose then I agree this is a good step forward for Wikepedia. One of the keys will be if they allow edits that are backed up by documentation; much as real editors do in real life; or if they simply avoid controversy, push agendas, or protect their "friends." If it's the latter they'll simply be another Fox news.

Of course, someone could simply fork the current version and keep the previous policies; a head to head match to see who wins.

And how exactly is "get an account and wait for a while" a secret "inner circle"? Because that's all you'll have to do to be able to edit (and presumably approve) - just as is currently the case for editing protected articles.

The top universities in the UK are often accused of elitism. Somehow it never seems to occur to the accusers that they are and remain the top universities precisely because they aim to select the best.

Actually, they're burying edits of people who are live.
But the rule only applies to edits of living people, so somewhere there must be a server that sees dead people so it can again allow edits to people's articles.:-)

I have been ignoring the Wikipedia for awhile now... true everyone can edit it... so long as you reference and summarise something somewhere else.

ie. You can't contribute knowledge to the Wikipedia... only regurgitated leavings from other websites. It's just a dreary collection of the web predigested by a wasp hivemind mindset hiding behind the mask of NPOV.

So they have just added another layer to enforce that fundamental limitation further. So what. Try everything2 [everything2.com] instead.

That's always been the point. What you add has to have been published elsewhere first (and not just websites; scientific journals or other reliable sources are preferable to some nutcase's Geocities website). They aspire to create an encyclopedia, and such works do not have original knowledge in them -- the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy being an exception.

If your view is that an Encyclopedia is compendium of all human knowledge... then Wikipedia is a dead failure.

If your view is that an Encyclopedia is a summary of somehow blessed, purified and sanctified knowledge... Yup. It works sorta for a remarkable and, umm, curious set of values for "blessed", "purified", "sanctified" and "knowledge".

There was an exciting and all too brief a period in the history of the Wikipedia when it wasn't spammed with ugly tags disputing the relevance, citation, neutrality, copyright, and importance.

There was that brief exciting time if somebody somewhere thought it important enough to write it, it was in.

And that was the joy of it. It was the compendium of things someone, somewhere, anybody, anywhere thought exciting and interesting and important.

Then they took all the fun out of it.

So this/. article is merely about the next step in the long established agenda of "remove the fun and interest"... hey, it's no news. They robbed it of it's soul years ago.

I have evil plans afoot to devise a competitor to Wikipedia that deletes nothing, sneers at the very existence of a Neutral Point of View, denies the possibility of Truth, but....

allows you to rank the veracity and importance of every article...

thus exposing your biases and interests...(relative to other users biases)

and with a bit of vector mathematics jiggery pokery (which I can rant on about in the unlikely event that you're interested)

allow the engine to rank articles based on your biases and interests as inferred from rankings made by other people with similar (or antithetical) biases.

Closest I came was when some damn yanks were gaming the system by swamping the article on Waterboarding. Of course the could find thousands of references to Bushshite apparatchiks stating categorically that waterboarding isn't torture and the mods clamped the page at a revision stating it wasn't torture. (I'm please to see the article is now fairly good.)

But the incident made me take the fundamental problem with Wikipedia seriously enough to sit up and look out for it. Once I started to look out for that problem, I noticed it enough other places for me to now instinctively lower the ranking of wikipedia hits.

Of course, if you are an American WASP... you can look and look and look at the wikipedia all day and not see the problem with NPOV.:-))

"But the incident made me take the fundamental problem with Wikipedia seriously enough to sit up and look out for it. Once I started to look out for that problem, I noticed it enough other places for me to now instinctively lower the ranking of wikipedia hits."

Wikipedia's designed intent is to accurately reflect the consensus culture's view of knowledge. Seems like it's doing that just fine. In cases where that culture itself is bitterly divided, and holders of various positions sling names at each other in the media, from governmental pulpits, and in published scientific journals, were you expecting Wikipedia to somehow magically rise above this and achieve perfect truth?

Because if you could bottle an algorithm for doing that, you'd get the Nobel Peace Prize. Or be assassinated, or both.

Wikipedia's designed intent is to accurately reflect the consensus culture's view of knowledge. Seems like it's doing that just fine. In cases where that culture itself is bitterly divided, and holders of various positions sling names at each other in the media, from governmental pulpits, and in published scientific journals, were you expecting Wikipedia to somehow magically rise above this and achieve perfect truth?

Agreed, but;

Especially in the English Wikipedia your statement is more than correct. That is, as the English language is de facto lingua franca of the global community, the "culture" you are referring to is divided. Divided by hundreds of lines, carved in stone for ages. I guess people will always agree about their disagreements, in such an environment. Assuming that English is your native language, let me tell shortly about my native language wiki, which is the Turkish version. There is a cultural division in Turkish Wikipedia that is reflecting the socio-political division (some kind of conservative left and some kind of progressive right, if you are looking for logic in politics, look at somewhere else...) of Turkey. This division exist in original articles directly written in Turkish. Most items that I am interested in are (bad) translations from en.wikipedia.org. The logical step for people like me, is to move to English wiki, and start writing there, because it is what we are reading. I guess a similar drive can be found in other languages.

Thus, the fundamental issue can be expressed in one question: Will wikipedia reflect the cultural divide that exists in its reader/contributor base? If yes, it would be very difficult to achieve, and if no, the decision would result in the loss of some (probably very big) portions of "other" people. I guess this decision is made, the answer is "no", thus no cultural fragmentation would be accepted and the chosen cultural center is American Culture (most likely American WASP as mentioned above). This, probably is a good commercial and understandable political decision.

My own position was that of a small contributor for Turkey/Turkish related items. I stopped writing some years ago, because it became more than boring to see some information you provided after some real research to be replaced by some (badly written) incorrect data. And for some months I realized that the material I read became less interesting for me, including "Today's featured article". I can see that in the future I will stop reading wikipedia. In order to see what American general population thinks (more correctly, what they are made to think) there are better sources, like CNN, Yahoo etc.

As I mentioned, the decision (which I assume will not be limited to "living persons' articles only, in the future) is a good decision that will increase the quality, and a bad one that brings in some strong borders. If I was an optimist, I would say "If they keep it balanced..." but I do not think it is possible to keep it balanced...

Wikipedia's designed intent is to accurately reflect the consensus culture's view of knowledge. Seems like it's doing that just fine. In cases where that culture itself is bitterly divided, and holders of various positions sling names at each other in the media, from governmental pulpits, and in published scientific journals, were you expecting Wikipedia to somehow magically rise above this and achieve perfect truth?

I guess the difference is between "The culture is bitterly divided" and "A small cult with an agenda is bitterly divided from everyone else". Like in this case, where they're trying desperately to claim that a technique to force information out of prisoners isn't torture when torture almost by definition is the only way of doing that. Very often here on slashdot I see the advice "Don't talk to the police. Get a lawyer." to which you'd get a comfy cell while waiting and they'd be sent to Gitmo for waterboard

Uhhh...forcing someone to undergo a simulated drowning should NOT be divided on whether or not that would be considered torture. Anyone not drinking the koolaid or with an agenda would be hard pressed to have any kind of rational argument about that particular fact.

Now one could argue about whether or not torture is ever justified (I say it is not and erodes our position and makes us no better than the enemy) but having a page on waterboarding changed and locked saying that it isn't torture is like having one of the moon landing is a hoax guys linking all articles on lunar exploration to Capricorn One. here is a nice article [wikitruth.info] on wikitruth about NPOV, and how politics play a very heavy handed role on Wikipedia.

Your comment is modded funny for obvious reasons. Moderation doesn't work perfectly but on the other hand I do think it's something that should get some serious thought.

And a way to put opposing views/opinions in an article, as there is no such thing as a one and only truth, especially when you are talking about cultural or moral issues. As long as fact and opinion are clearly marked. E.g. there are the facts about cannabis (the plant it comes from, the chemical substances, where it's grown, etc) and the opinions (using it as a drug is good/bad, using it as medication is a good/bad idea, etc).

And now I'm at it: a way to link to the same subject in a different language. I can read English, Dutch and German and with some effort also French. My wife can read English and Chinese. It would be very convenient to be able to include links to the same subject in other languages, if present. Then I can read the English language article on some subject, and then switch to the Dutch language article which may have a different viewpoint due to different cultures. Or maybe it contains more/other information.

Wikipedia is turning to peer review. And they need to. Because wikipedia is a top search-engine return, pretty much everybody who uses the internet understands it now, and every kid is going to want to joke it, and everybody with a gripe, the list goes on.

If you are so unlucky as to be portrayed by a Wikipedia article, and you've read your article history, you'll know about the folks with gripes.

Can you think of a way to have quality without doing peer review? Doesn't every significant Open Source software project have it these days?

It's still free, still an encyclopedia, and anyone can still edit it. Identically to before with any article NOT about a livin person. It's equivalent to "locking" an entire class of pages. No big deal.

What's to stop them from doing it again with another class of articles? Maybe they'll decide that articles about healthcare are controversial next, and then they'll unilaterally restrict those too. And who is "trusted"? I've been editing Wikipedia casually for 6 years (originally actively, then more and more casually as I've been progressively locked out of the community), but an edit count "only" in the hundreds will probably place me in the class of users who can no longer freely edit this class of pages. I already couldn't vote in their elections for the same reason. Now I won't be able to freely contribute either.

It doesn't say you can't edit. It just legitimatizes the secrete editing squads who serve their own purposes. All this means is that if you edit and it says something they do not like, no one else will ever see it.

Why not. Competition is a good thing. Frankly I find it a bit scary that such an enormous amount of work by so many people is apparently at the mercy of so few. So a "trusted editor" or two with a political agenda can control the major source of information on a particular subject which is apparently referenced by journalists and academics (although of course it shouldn't be), probably comes up as the first result on google etc. If anything, this makes me less inclined to trust the information in wikipedia than when it was free for all and errors could be easily added and just as easily removed. I hope this is just an experiment rather than the first step to implementing this process on the whole thing but I doubt it.

Agree in whole.

To put it into perspective, though, this limitation pretty much defines the editorial constraints of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, which survived for years as a printed work before the advent of Wikipedia.

I would be slightly less worried (the difference in sheer scope between the two encyclopedias is a stunner) if the "trusted editors" weren't quite so agressive in their reversions. I find this aromatically equivalent to "untrustworthy".

Inability to handle the volume of submissions shouldn't be the reason for reversions.

About 4 or 5 years ago I was teaching a class and demonstrating Wikipedia was part of the class. There was a projector in the room and this was all on a large screen in front of everyone. I showed the Bush page and several others, then for some reason went back to the Bush page. In the 5 minutes we were looking at it someone had replaced the entire page with the word "WANKER". The students went into hysterics.

I have no doubts that every student in that class since understood why professors told them that they shouldn't cite Wikipedia as a source.

The control freaks have been in charge for years. Pages on straightforward subjects are fairly accurate, but if it is at all controversial, WikiNazis are camped out on it. It doesn't matter if your facts are stated clearly, documented, and presented in an unbiased manner. If they don't like them your changes are gone in an hour or two.

I've tried adding facts to their Passive Smoking page, to no avail. The very name of the page is loaded with bias. The correct term is Environmental Tobacco Smoke. The common term is Second Hand Smoke, and the page used to be called that. But they've deliberately used the most loaded term possible for the page, and it's packed with inaccurate and biased statements. I've added facts, complete with references, and they've never lasted more than two hours. Even tiny edits to make a statement more neutral were quickly removed.

If there's any controversy about a subject you can be sure Wikipedia will only highlight the POV of the resident WikiNazis. This has made the site useless for all but the most basic subjects for years. Now they're just making it even more impossible for facts they don't like to be displayed.

Am I the only one here who doesn't see any bias in the term "passive smoking"? It might be because that's what virtually everyone calls it in the UK ("second hand smoke" sounds like a barbarous Americanism;), but surely if one who lights a cigarette and deliberately inhales the resultant smoke can be considered to be "actively" smoking, then one who inhales tobacco smoke only because they are in a smoky environment could be thought of as "passively" smoking.

To my ears "Second Hand" smoke sound like the weasel words; a person who acquires something second hand does so by choice, I don't think (for example) Roy Castle [wikipedia.org] chose his fate.

It will divide Wikipedia's contributors into two classes experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else altering Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries.

For years, people here have ridiculed Wikipedia on the notion that anyone can edit it, and edits appear instantly without any checking by another person. Yet now they implement such a system - that's wrong too!

I don't know if this idea is good or not, but at least put forward a proper debate rather than claims about creating "two classes" or whining that people no longer have an "equal right" (hey, do I have an equal right to edit the NYTimes article?) It's always the same. Some people say that Wikipedia has too much fancruft. Others blame Wikipedia for deleting too much stuff. Some people complain that Wikipedia allows edits from anyone without sources. Others whine when their edits were reverted. Can't both sides argue among themselves, rather than blaming Wikipedia everytime?

Because the NYTimes don't cite their sources, it's hard to see what's being proposed. If it's like the current rules for protected article, then the decision on who can approve an article will purely be based on having an account for a given period of time. There's no unequal rights, no second class system, no old-boy-network.

I can see this making sense - when Wikipedia was new, allowing anonymous edits to appear straight away was important to get people hooked, and get as many people using it as possible. Now with 3 million articles, that's really not needed - what's needed is to stabilise mature articles, and to improve the quality.

For years, people here have ridiculed Wikipedia on the notion that anyone can edit it, and edits appear instantly without any checking by another person. Yet now they implement such a system - that's wrong too!

Wrong, only the media, public figures, and other entities that don't understand the internet, web 2.0, the FOSS movement, and the spirit of the internet have been criticizing wikipedia's credibility standards. The whole [citation needed] thing was a reaction to criticism by main-stream press and political figures who can't understand that facts are NOT handed down from 'on high' and that sometimes, the mob can be right if they leave the knowledge to the experts in the field that swoop down and make critical edits to a fleshed out piece, transforming an OK article into a good one.

This is a Bad Move because it has been forced onto wikipedia by external forces and it's own internal cadre of esteemed editors with too much free time such that they protect their article from edits.

If anything, the people here have been criticizing wikipedia for turning away from it's motto of "the free encyclopedia that anybody can edit" towards a more closed model, both from internal and external forces.

Mostly we lament the loss of What Could Have Been and complain when wikipedia bows to traditional media's conform-to-our-paid-for-views mentality.

The whole [citation needed] thing was a reaction to criticism by main-stream press and political figures who can't understand that facts are NOT handed down from 'on high' and that sometimes, the mob can be right if they leave the knowledge to the experts in the field that swoop down and make critical edits to a fleshed out piece, transforming an OK article into a good one.

You, like most people, seem to be under the opinion that there is only one viewpoint that is "slashdot" and that it is therefor hypocritical when two opposing views are expressed. In reality, of course, there are thousands of regular users all of whom have slightly varied views. And of course you'll hear from the outraged ones but not so much from the ones who don't care about a particular subject, leading you to believe that 'slashdot' as a whole is outraged about contradictory things.

In my opinion, this isn't actually censorship, but a rather effective anti-trolling measure.

Wikipedia is not a forum where everyone can post his opinion and let the user decide which one's right. It's an encyclopedia. If someone defaces it or uses it as a means to alter someone's reputation (for good or ill), it will lose credibility.

For one, this "control freak" measure can be used, for example, to prevent mad scientologists from removing negative remarks on their current leaders, or right-wing zealots fro

I hope I can still view unapproved version. It would be great if this keeps the deletionist happy enough that we can start adding stuff again, because nobody has to look after the pages, maybe they can even give anon users the ability to create pages again.

The wrong way is to change an article to make it look like "Wikipedia" supports your position. If people read that Wikipedia says that roach racing is an inhumane practice, will it matter? It's just a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. The die-hard fans of cruelty to cockroaches would simply reach for their revert buttons and scowl at how their opponents are trying to skew the article.

The right way to push your point of view is to provide the facts that led you to believe what you do. Cite academic references on the prevalence of arthritis in insect athletes. Provide an external link to a videotape of a famous blatellid athlete falling to his doom from the table of honor. If the facts led you to a point of view, they'll lead others to the same point of view.

I want to wipe out the opposing point of view from the article

The wrong way to kneecap your opposition is to delete his "bogus" claims, sources and all, from the article. Never mind the revert war -- do you want your audience to remain vulnerable to the fallacies he raises? No, if he's raising a point that's been raised before, then you should be able to find rebuttals that people have made to it before. Again, provide your facts and sources. The battle goes not to the swiftest reverter, nor to the most strongly worded edit, but to those who persevere in their research and dig up citable sources for every fact that can be found.

There are an infinite number of perspectives on a subject, even if you are aware of only two. At the least, consider what ideas and assumptions you and your opponents share as common ground, and also what alternative solutions to a problem can be found that rely on neither your side's assumptions nor the other's for their validity. If you want to succeed in making an article include the facts about your point of view, accept that your point of view when you finish may be more informed than when you began.

I have a great company and I want to promote it on Wikipedia

The wrong way to promote your company is with blatant advertising and vanity links. They'll only get you in trouble and lead in the long term to suppression of future attempts.

The more wrong way is to start a brand new article about your company. Not only will you have trouble with policy, but imagine if you succeed! Then you'll have a page that you have to constantly monitor against vandalism, and you could lose control of it to some disgruntled former employee who can dig up true unflattering information and keep it in place permanently. Besides, how many people would read the article anyway?

The right way to promote your company is to bear in mind that "advertising" on Wikipedia can indeed be bought with the right currency - information. If you can provide a good, thorough, useful reference on a subject on your company Web site, then you can cite it sparingly in relevant articles and thereby establish your company as a legitimate, trustworthy authority. Literally or figuratively, go into the back room and see what you can take a picture of that the public doesn't normally have a chance to see. What is interesting that you can present for the first time? What data have you collected that you could present on the Web? Once you make an informative company Web site that bears your copyright and provides much useful information, the only way that Wikipedia can use it is by reference or external link, which brings readers to your doorstep.

The rules on conflict of interest can be strictly interpreted, but if your bait is tasty enough there will be no resisting it. If you can survive this examination, then your account provides another link back to the company and another chance for it to appear in a favorable light, if the account is used only with temperance and civility.

I want to make a legal threat against someone

Instead of screaming you're going to sue somebody, consider the rational approach. Mention what law you feel has been violated, Wikilinking the appropriate legal precedents -- start articles for them if they aren't in Wikipedia. Say what the liability for breaking the law could be. But say nothing that a disinterested third party observer idly commenting on the case might say, if he agreed with your analysis. Then see what the actual third party editors think, and that way you either get your point across, or save a bundle in legal fees for a lost cause.

But go ahead and break all the rules and if you aren't sure just ignore your inhibitions and edit it! And if you want to push your agenda, just put up more and more facts. I enjoyed reading those articles when I started editing and before long (9 edits or something) I didn'

"The more wrong way is to start a brand new article about your company. Not only will you have trouble with policy, but imagine if you succeed! Then you'll have a page that you have to constantly monitor against vandalism, and you could lose control of it to some disgruntled former employee who can dig up true unflattering information and keep it in place permanently. Besides, how many people would read the article anyway?"

That's terrible reasoning. Even if you don't start a new article some disgruntled former employee could. At least creating a decent article about your company makes it more likely for a random wikipedia user/admin to revert the page back to your original if there's some clear vandalism- this means less work for you. Whereas if the disgruntled person started the page first, you'd be at a disadvantage - there's nothing to revert to.

For example, a random person might easily revert a page that just says "Assholes" to your original. In contrast if someone creates a page about your company that just says "Assholes", a random person is far less likely to replace it with an entire page of content about your company.

The only problem is it's potentially open to abuse. But as long as the edits are preserved so anyone can see them if they want to, then the system should work reasonably well. It will be kind of like the slashdot moderation system, which can be described as not perfect, but better than anything else we've tried.

or right-wing zealots from removing negative aspects of their favorite political candidate.

For that matter, it can also prevent left-wing nutjobs from removing favorable aspects from the pages of their political opponents. In fact, it will slow down and possibly prevent the vandalism of pages by fruitcakes from all parts of the political spectrum.

In my case, I noticed that the population figure for a major city didn't match the value given in the reference the wiki page linked to, so I change it to the correct one. I did this three times, and every time it was reverted. It is hard to imagine how I could have done something more valid than making a post to match the damn citation. My impression is that someone considered it their pet page and was reverting my changes immediately, without bothering to research because they didn't recognize my usern

As Gabe of Penny Arcade said it best [penny-arcade.com]: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.

Ultimately it catches up to anything. Forums, blogs, and now Wikipedia. I'm not sure this is a good change for Wikipedia, but at some point you have to do something to stop the fuckwads from completely tagging the place.

This is not really a Rubicon. I edited for several years with a WP account. Then I decided WP had evolved into a thing that was no longer fun for me, and to reduce my temptation to get involved in any more WP stuff, I disabled my account by munging the password. Ever since then, I've been editing without logging in. There are already a lot of things you can't do without being logged in. You can't upload an image, can't mark your edits as minor, can't make a new article, can't edit certain articles. WP's official policy is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with editing anonymously, but people are often very snotty toward you if you edit anonymously. There's a strong tendency for both humans and bots to revert anonymous editors' edits, even if it's a good edit, with a good comment line pointing to discussion on the talk page.

Modify the Slashcode to require Anonymous posters and registered users with low Karma to have their posts/replies approved by any user with a Excellent or greater Karma rating before the posts/replies become visible to anyone with less than Great Karma rating. Also have the following Slashdot moderation process affect the karma of the users who approved the posts.

Just trial it for a couple of months and see the difference it will make.

If you're a registered user, you will see unconfirmed edits by default [wikipedia.org]. Someone could (and most likely will) set up a mirror/proxy/script/whatever that displays the unfiltered Wikipedia for those who don't wish to register.

"Wikipedia's implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries."

Due to the presence of "administrators" who can bar non-administrators from editing (i.e. locking an article), that has never been true.Not that I agree with increased restriction but at least the anons can still submit edits and they'll be evaluated by editors who probably won't have the "what I say goes" attitude of the administrators.

We just had a story a short while ago about Wikipedia having plateaued. With the current system, barely any revisions by members outside the WP "elite" actually make it through. Now with forced moderation, that will likely drop to zero. There's a distinct line between janitor and censor that I believe is being crossed here. I can understand the community trying to rid WP of garbage. That follows with the protection of some commonly vandalized articles. I just think that protection of articles was supposed to be the exception; this change makes it the rule. Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can try to edit.

Over the past three years, the standards have tightened up. Now, everything has to have footnoted references. Wikipedia has always required that material be verifiable, but now, "verifiable" means correctly footnoted to a reliable source.

If you've published in refereed journals, or spent time in academia, this is no big deal.
The problem for many inexperienced editors is that they're not used to writing with references.
Most of the whining comes from people who just want to write their own stuff, not dig for references and write footnotes. Wikipedia calls that "original research".

This requirement first appeared in politically controversial articles. Then it spread to most articles on serious subjects. Now it's applied even to fancruft. ("What do you mean I can't write about 'Zords in Power Rangers: Jungle Fury' because they weren't mentioned in a Journal of Popular Culture article?") The detailed fancruft is gradually moving to Wikia, which has lower standards.

Wikipedia is an open source project with coding standards and quality control, not a blog.

The sum of human knowledge is far greater than the sum of academic knowledge. At one time, Wikipedia seemed like a place in which everybody could contribute to share their knowledge. That time is long gone, and now a certain class of people who think of themselves as academically superior run the site. It now strives to be a better Britannica, rather than a completely different and grander project.

Does Wikipedia have value? Obviously. Is it what I thought it was 5 years ago? No. Do I wish it were? Yes.

This requirement first appeared in politically controversial articles. Then it spread to most articles on serious subjects. Now it's applied even to fancruft. ("What do you mean I can't write about 'Zords in Power Rangers: Jungle Fury' because they weren't mentioned in a Journal of Popular Culture article?") The detailed fancruft is gradually moving to Wikia, which has lower standards.

I believe this is a conscious commercial strategy designed to drive more and more content to Wikia, which is a for-profit company founded by Jimmy Wales--who also happens to be the leader of the "inner circle" at Wikipedia.

I believe this is a conscious commercial strategy designed to drive more and more content to Wikia, which is a for-profit company founded by Jimmy Wales.

I used to think that too. But Wikia has been a flop. It ended up as a free hosting service for fancruft. They have the Star [Wars|Trek|Gate|Craft] wikis, fan fiction, and TV show wikis. Their demographic lives in their parents basement. Wikia Search, an attempt to "crowdsource" a search engine, shut down months ago. Now Wikia is a dumping ground

This won't work. The idea of encylopedia as wiki only works while editing is relatively straight forward and can be done by almost anyone. I know it hasn't REALLY been like that for some time, but I think what we're seeing is the next phase of a decline not a brave new world of better encylopedias.

The fundamental problem: Make too many editors trusted, and you have the potential for wide spread abuse by the editors going unchecked. Too few trusted editors and you get edits stagnating and awaiting approval indefinitely. Both will turn people off contributing, and striking a balance is next to impossible.

It's not a new problem. I remember the old "talkers" (social MUDs) in the 90's. Becoming a super user became a trophy win. You'd either get too few or too many, people would actually trade real world sexual favours for the privellege of being an SU (or use it as a pretext for sex - we're talking about college kids) and things would go to hell. If you don't have any experience with that, imagine how well a Unix system would run if every time you changed file permissions, a super user was needed to approve the change.

This change has doomed Wikipedia. In a decade we'll all be reminiscing about it. The staff at the paid encyclopedias must be cracking open bottles of champagne. Wait and see.

This means that, further, individuals with expertise will be probably undone when correcting common myth, perpetuating more falsehood.

I used to be one of those gung-ho wikipedia defenders until I started trying to participate. THAT was an eye-opening experience. You know the type of person that is commonly known as the "bureaucratic fuck?" The type of person you find in government that is nothing more than a peanut in the system but has power over you so they wield it like a tot with a lightsaber toy? That is the wikipedia "bureaucrat" in a nutshell. They don't care about what the actual facts are (and are quite proud to say so), they care more about rules being followed and WILL revert or otherwise defend false information if it's corrected in a manner they deem against the rules. I was editing out obvious bias and conspiracy theory nonsense and got reprimanded for undoing his edit three times. The guy had a fetish for the article in question because he had some kook bias and watched it like a hawk adding in his garbage all the time. The wiki staff told me to "let the community sort it out" but a month later his garbage was still on the page and they wouldn't do anything about it and I still couldn't revert it out over three times.

Eventually I did win especially when wiki started requiring more stringent citations, but I lost faith in the sham of their "arbitration" process. I once heard that wikipedia was just a bunch of nerds roleplaying a bureaucracy, and I'm convinced that's true. I'm sure the moderators and such watching over article revisions will be much like how the rest of WP works--the pro-Israel and anti-Israel crowds warring over the Israel article, the pedophiles whitewashing the pedophilia article (this occurs, I shit you not), and so on. This time though, whomever has the most moderators, wins.

and I can tell you that from the Wikis that I have been on. Many times I had to revert an edit because:

#1 Someone posted a "X is gay!" comment on the article about their friend or school mate.#2 Someone blanked the page.#3 Someone did a personal attack against an admin or another user in the article.#4 Someone used swear words to describe the article and what it was about.#5 Someone linked to 4Chan type links or Goatse, Lemonparty, etc.#6 It was a Spammer adding a link to their web sites that have spyware popup ads on them.#7 Someone uploaded nude or porno images and the article was not about those things.#8 Someone posted personal information and tried to cyberbully someone else. (Usually this needs an Admin to remove the edit history from the server and as a normal user I cannot remove it, so I flag down an Admin on their talk page to deal with it.)#9 Random nonsense is scribbled all over the page making it unreadable, and no it is not in a another language put a bunch of 1's and etc like this "11111112222333jrjfjdsubf3875uott7".#10 Sexual references are made throughout the article and the article is not about sex, but it is a form of vandalism.

But in the case of Wikipedia they do things like say Ted Kennedy died when he didn't. Which seems like some sort of practical joke when many celebrities had died at once like Michael Jackson, Farra Fawcett, Billy Mays, etc.

I am guessing to be a trusted user, one has to have gained enough trust to be a Wikipedia Admin and thus approve of edits to an article. The rest of us are just editors. Administrators always had more power and rights than the average user anyway, they just got a new power to approve of edits on protected articles.

Ironically Wikipedia's rival Conservapedia had a system like that for quite a while, and also shuts off new user registrations from time to time. You'd expect that out of Conservatives, but most Wikipedia Admins are left-wingers, but they understand that these new controls are needed to protect the accuracy of the articles.

Here's the actual policy draft [wikipedia.org]. The so called "articles about living people" are actually specific heavily vandalized articles that are already eligible for semi-protection, and the "experienced volunteer editor for Wikipedia" is any account at least four days old that's made at least ten edits. Not exactly the epic failure of Wikipedia's core principles that the mainstream news media would like it to be. It's heavily ironic that that the NYT is too busy bashing Wikipedia to concern themselves with the facts of the story here.

I've had wikipedia editors removed my articles using standard wiki excuses for deletion. I decided to see if the editors who deleted the articles where biased, so I checked on their pet articles and backgrounds. These editors would delete, even when I got votes to keep it in I requested to undelete. Anything that confronted their pet projects would be deleted. Also, they are members in clubs that conflict with the articles.

I've experienced the bigots on there, and if an editor has a vendetta, smaller articles will be deleted. The use this to promote their own views. Its not open when editors can use the rules to fight off any thing that conflicts with their personal beliefs.

Sucks, because articles can have pros/cons on subjects, but seems only new subjects can be added. You try to add a person who had their 15 minutes of fame from the 70's, and most editors where not even born yet. So of course its not a valid article, articles about south park are..

Wikipedia has censorship, bigot editors, and children running it. Its a sad state of affairs over there. But yet I keep trying to use it, even after dealing with these people.

I find if anything other than fact based articles are ok, if they concern people, ideas, or beliefs, its too liberal to be fair, and too feminist to be accurate.

Not saying I'm against that, but there are counter thoughts to modern feminism, and other issues. But only the popular view will be published on Wikipedia with these editors.

Can you already see the drama that will invariably come with edits to current events? Someone dies, something happens and thousands of people will start editing, since they can't see that the entry has already been made. Usually, today, when something happens, if you're 5 minutes late you will already see it being added. Then, well, depends on how quickly one of the Powers that Will Be (tm) will be there to review the entries.

I bet you a sizable can of ice cream that there will be THOUSANDS by the time any reviewer wakes up and starts sifting through the edits. What will he pick? Hell, will he even read all of them? Unlikely.

What will he do instead? Probably do what every sane person would do, take the easy way out: He'll read a handful of changes made by "important" people (read: editors known to be at least all right) and then, depending on whether he's trying to do a good job or trying to suck up to someone, pick the best or the one from the most important person.

What does this lead to? Essentially, it will lead to you only having a chance to make a change (or rather, a change that will see the light of day) in respect to current events if you're already in the "in-crowd". Thus making it even harder for those not in this circle to gain "rank" in the normal, contributing way, forcing even more people into gaming the system mode, unless they just want to say "screw it" after being reverted for no good reason for the n-th time.

And then watch the drama fly. "But my article was much better, his only got picked because he is $important_figurehead". I'll get the popcorn, someone please bring the soda. We can watch it in widescreen in my apartment if you want.

The online user-generated social networking site Wikipedia and the venerable EncyclopÃ¦dia Britannica are both considering radical changes in how they are run.

Wikipedia is proposing a software change that would see revisions on some articles being approved before they went live on the site. "Our featured articles on subjects such as 4chan cannot be sullied with false reports and vandalism BUSH IS GAY LOLOLOLOL," said Jimmy Wales.

The change has proven controversial. "It's a slippery slope," said administrator WikiFiddler451 (real name WikiViolin451). "I don't see how we can reasonably keep the Pokemon and Naruto entries sufficiently up-to-date and welcoming of new contributors. I understand the queue for edits to go live could be up to an hour. The occasional accusation of paedophilia against minor public figures in the page thatâ(TM)s top Google hit on their name is a small price to pay for the most up-to-date neutrality."

Meanwhile, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has considered adopting "wiki"-like methods (from the Hawaiian word "wikiwiki," meaning "your proposed edit is stalled on a six-month discussion by obsessive nerds who failed a Turing test and speak entirely in WP:INITIALISMS"), particularly when it comes to their publicity. Under the plan, readers and contributing experts from Encyclopedia Dramatica will help expand and maintain press releases about those deemed "suppressive" by the editorial board, comparing them to public toilets and assorted unflattering Internet memes, and darkly insinuating that Google only pushes Wikipedia because theyâ(TM)re in it for the money.